The role of government

Here are two interesting articles touching on the role of government in a society.

The first article is from El Salvador, where apparently the conservative Congress has approved a law such that schoolkids will be read to for 7 minutes every morning from the Bible. The idea is to improve their values, though it's not specified which values. Not only believers in the separation of Church and State, but the very archbishop of El Salvador, are up in arms about the unconstitutional law, with the latter claiming that the school is not an appropriate environment for the contemplation of the Bible. The author of the article puts it this way: if family and the church haven't instilled moral values and religion in children, the government certainly won't be able to. It seems to me that cynical, opportunistic right-wing politicians that use religion to achieve their political ends are left in sort of a bind when the very head of the main church of the country insists on the inappropriateness of mixing religion and politics!

The second article is from Martin O'Neill on the justification for taxation. I have often thought along the lines that O'Neill articulates--that the people who live in a society are all undeniable, irrevocably dependent on one another and on the society as a structure. By this thinking, taxes aren't what the government takes from your rightful property, but rather the repayment you give to the government out of the money that the government has enabled you to earn. It is fair that Bill Gates pay millions of dollars in taxes, because his multi-million-dollar income is dependent on the security, the bank insurance, the stable dollar, the infrastructure, the educated workforce, the intellectual property laws, and all the other societal services that his tax dollars then reimburse. The road Bill Gates travels on to get to work is worth more to him than it is to the low-wage worker that travels on it, so Gates should pay more for it.

O'Neill doesn't focus so much on this point as on how government balances its budget fairly or unfairly in times of crisis. He argues that to respond to the banking crisis-caused fall in tax receipts, it is unfair for the UK government to cut public services. This is paying for the sins of the wealthy by punishing the poor.